Blake smiled despite himself, leaned up against the table, and took a sip of his tea. “Nah. Except in football and basketball, I kind of have to support the Seattle team. It’s a requirement.” Or it had used to be.
“Well, good. They’ll lose, most likely, but that’s the breaks. Got to watch ’em lose if you’re going to watch ’em win. If you’re a fan, you can’t bug out when the going gets tough.”
“That’s the code we like to hear,” Blake agreed. Hang around to watch, though? He was going to be lucky if Dakota didn’t poison his salmon, and he didn’t need to look at her happy little family any more.
The back door opened and the big guy came out, still holding the baby. A girl baby, Blake realized. Before, she’d been wearing a yellow swimsuit with a ruffled bottom, and now, she had on a sort of white cotton sleeper thing with tiny hearts all over it. Definitely a girl. She had fine blonde hair in a cloud around her head, and she was making some noise that wasn’t quite crying while she chewed on her fist.
“Hey, Evan,” Russell said. “How’s my Gracie-girl? Oh, this is Blake.”
Blake shoved himself upright and said, “Blake Orbison,” then realized the guy couldn’t shake hands, because he had the baby in one arm and a bottle in the other hand.
He wasn’t sure Evan would’ve shaken his hand anyway. He got a long, slow, measuring look from the other man before he said “Evan O’Donnell.” Like he knew what Blake had been doing with his girlfriend—or more like what he’d been thinking—which wasn’t uncomfortable much at all. Evan asked Russell, “Could you give Gracie her bottle while I help Dakota put up that storage unit?”
“I’d be glad to give you a hand,” Blake said.
Evan looked at him levelly and said, “Thanks. I think we’ve got it.” Yep, Blake was a popular man around here for sure.
Russell said, “Let me wash my hands first. Give her to Blake in the meantime and go on and help Dakota.”
Blake didn’t think Evan was going to hand the baby over. There was a long silence, then Russell said, “For God’s sake. He’s not going to drop her. You don’t get to play for the NFL if you drop things.”
“Well, to be fair,” Blake said, “quarterbacks mostly throw. But I won’t drop her,” he assured the other man hastily. “I’ve held babies.”
Wait a second. Had he? Probably not. He’d seen other people hold them, though. How hard could it be?
Russell headed back into the house. Evan hesitated again, then handed the baby over, and Blake tucked her into the crook of his arm. Not so different from holding a football, except that she was surprisingly solid for somebody so little. Wriggly, too. He sat down just to be on the safe side, and Evan nodded and went into the house.
The baby squirmed, and he wondered if he was supposed to support her head. He’d read that, but she seemed to be holding it up OK. He put a hand there just in case. She let out a squawk, though, and he took it hastily away.
All right, then. Not. He said “Shh” in a reassuring tone and patted her gingerly on the back. She heaved in a breath, then let out a wail, and he was so startled, he jumped. Then she really set in to scream.
He started to sweat. What was he supposed to do? She was crying like he’d just insulted her pajamas or something, and her face was turning bright red. The only person he got along with in this house, he thought wildly, was Russell.
Wait. The bottle. Babies cried when they were hungry, and the bottle was right there. And her father had said she was hungry. He picked it up, hesitated, then stuck the nipple in her mouth.
That was it. Both her dimpled little hands came up to grab the plastic bottle, she started gulping the milk down as if she’d been moments from starvation, and Blake’s tense muscles relaxed some.
Russell came through the back door fast, took in the sight of him, then hauled his way down the stairs with one hand on the rail, saying, “I thought the neighbors were going to call the cops. How long did that take you to figure out? Guess you’ve never had to feed a baby before.”
“Ah… no,” Blake said. “You could call it a new experience.”
Russell grunted out something that could have been a laugh. “You might as well hang onto her, then, and I’ll finish lighting the grill. Tip that bottle right up so she doesn’t get any air, or she’s liable to spit up that milk all over your shirt when you burp her.”
Oh, great. He was burping her? Well, it wasn’t her fault that her mother wasn’t everything she could be. She was actually pretty cute, now that she wasn’t screaming her head off. Her eyes were closed in blissful satisfaction, her cheeks were working hard to get every bit of that milk, and her tiny feet were pushing against the leg of his jeans like a cat kneading bread. If she’d been as miserable as a baby hopelessly lost in the desert before, right now she seemed as contented as a baby… well, as a baby who was getting what she needed.
He could hear the whine of an electric drill coming from the house. “Got to say,” he told Russell, “I’m better at putting up shelves than I am at babies.”
“Join the club,” Russell said, busy at the grill. “Luckily, they teach you, just like Gracie’s doing right there. They’ve got a pretty good signaling technique.”
Russell got the fire going the way he wanted it, put the cover on the barbecue, and came over to sit down. Blake asked, “How old is she?” because that was a question people always asked about babies.
“About five months now, I guess,” Russell said, which was a fairly casual answer about your—well, sort of your granddaughter.
“She seems strong,” Blake said lamely.
“Oh, yeah, she’s an active little thing. Got a killer smile, too, though I guess you haven’t seen that, and a pair of dimples that’ll just about take you out. Evan’s got his hands full, but he’s not complaining.”
Evan? Not Dakota? Blake was confused again. He realized that the plastic bag inside the bottle was empty and the baby was sucking on air, and pulled the nipple hastily out of her mouth. He remembered the spitting-up thing. She made a protesting sound, and he worried he’d hurt her, yanking it away.
“You’re wondering what you do now,” Russell said, the amusement lurking in his blue eyes again.
“Well, yeah.” Blake looked down at the now-cherubic face. Gracie smiled at him, wide and joyous, and damned if she didn’t have dimples, plus a pair of great big blue eyes. And she didn’t have any teeth. He couldn’t have hurt her, then, yanking the bottle out like that. “And I’ve noticed that you’re laughing at me, in case you were wondering.”
“Nah,” Russell said. “I was that guy myself once. Kinda funny to watch you do it, though, it’s true. What you do now is, pick her up and rest her against your shoulder. Pat her back, help her get the bubble up.”
Blake did it, feeling uncharacteristically clumsy, but the baby made a surprisingly snuggly little bundle. He could get the hang of this. But if there were any diapers to be changed, he was bowing out.
Russell said, “You’re not going to get anywhere patting like that. A little harder. Don’t whale away on her or nothing, just harder than that.”
All right, Blake might have been sweating again. How hard was hard enough?
The next thing he knew, the baby made a choking noise, and Blake felt something wet and warm against his T-shirt. He lifted her a little bit away from him and looked down.
“I told you not to let her get too much air,” Russell said, completely unhelpfully. “Well, she got the bubble up, anyway. Here, give her to me.”
Oh, now he was taking her. Blake checked out the milky mess on his shirt and sighed. Good thing he went for Hanes. Some of his more fashionable teammates, who wore T-shirts that cost a boat payment, would’ve been in deep wardrobe trouble right now.
The noise of the drill had stopped some time ago, and this was the moment Dakota and Evan chose to head outside.
Dakota didn’t look at Blake. She wasn’t wearing any makeup, and she was still barefoot, but she’d fixed her hair and changed
into a stretchy little orange knit skirt. It wasn’t quite a mini, but it was coming mighty close. What was worse, she’d topped it off with a snug white T-shirt with a wide neckline, and the bra under it wasn’t the thickest thing he’d ever seen. If he wasn’t supposed to look at her, he wished she’d have worn something else.
Russell said, “Gracie’s about asleep. Evan, why don’t you go on and grill that salmon for me and stick around and eat with us? Dakota, you can set the table and make a salad real quick. But first, take Blake on back and get him one of my shirts to change into. Gracie spit up all over him.”
Dakota muttered something that sounded like, “Good taste,” and Evan said, “Sure. I’ll put Gracie in the house, though.”
“You can put her on my bed,” Dakota said, and Blake thought, Wait, what?
“Well, decide and put her somewhere,” Russell said. “Blake and I are hungry, and those coals are going to be ready soon. We caught the fish and cleaned it. I figure our part’s done.”
“Wait,” Blake said. He was going to be direct again. “Whose baby is that?”
Everybody stared at him. “Mine,” Evan said. “Of course she’s mine. Whose did you think?”
“Oh,” Blake said. Russell had on his amused look again. Blake was glad he was entertaining somebody, because he was feeling downright annoyed by now. He was covered with baby puke, he’d been beating himself up for lusting after somebody else’s girlfriend, and now she wasn’t?
Russell said, “Nah. She’s not Dakota’s. Evan’s my partner. Was my partner. He’s Dakota’s partner now.”
“Business partner,” Dakota muttered. “Painting partner.”
My partner has a baby. She’d said that, out at the rocks. “Oh,” Blake said again. He practically had whiplash by now, he’d changed directions so many times this afternoon.
Evan took the drowsy baby from Russell, and she gave a contented little sigh and snuggled in close. Obviously she was his. He’d been the one holding her all along, and she was blonde with blue eyes, while Dakota was anything but. How could Blake have thought anything else? And maybe his radar wasn’t that far off after all.
Except it was, because Dakota jerked her chin at him and said, “Come on. I’ll find you a shirt if you’re going to stick around.” Which didn’t sound very much like, “Take me out dancing, pull me up close, and whisper dirty things in my ear.”
But then, nobody won the game in the first quarter.
Why, why, why was Blake Orbison in her house?
Or more like—why was he in Russell’s house? If he’d been in her house, she could have kicked him out. Or never have let him in.
But, even worse, what was the first thing she’d thought? Well, the second thing. The first thing had been, “He’s looking at my flowers,” followed by a rush of heat that had been embarrassment and anger and awareness and… and something. The second thing had been, “I’m a mess again.” The third thing had been, “What does that matter? What do I care whether Blake Orbison finds me sexually attractive?” The fourth thing had been, “Liar.”
And then what had she done? Had she put on her comfy shorts and a loose T-shirt and stuck her hair on top of her head like she would have done on any other warm day? No, she’d waited for Evan to get out of the bathroom with Gracie, then had taken a fast shower, blow-dried her hair halfway, and put on an outfit that she’d never have worn otherwise. At least she’d drawn the line at makeup and her contacts. She’d told herself it was a simple matter of pride, and had known she was lying. She’d just look like she hung around the house in sexy outfits as a matter of course.
Except that Blake’s girlfriend had been a supermodel. He wasn’t going to think her outfit from Dress Barn was sexy.
Now, he was following her back into the house, and she thought, Shirt. Salad. Self-control. She couldn’t kick him out, but she wasn’t going to let him get to her, whatever he said. Instead, she led the way into Russell’s room, opened his shirt drawer, and said, “Pick a color. You’ve got gray, navy blue, black, or white.” Russell didn’t exactly live on the cutting edge of fashion.
She turned to look at him and wished she hadn’t, because he was pulling his gray T-shirt up his chest and yanking it over his head, and then he was standing there in a pair of red gym shorts with a devil insignia on one leg. They hung too low on his slim hips, displaying the eight-pack again, the start of a thin trail of dark hair leading down from his navel, and that other thing. That vee of abdominal muscle that was her downfall.
She didn’t like gym boys, and she didn’t like puffed-up muscle-bound freaks, but she sure had a hard time resisting a man with that abdominal vee. Not to mention the kind of arms where you could say, “Shoulder muscle, check. Biceps, check. Triceps…” and move on down.
“White, please,” he said, and she blinked at him.
There was that crooked edge of smile trying to get out. “The T-shirt. If I get puked on again, at least I’ll match.”
“Oh.” She handed him the shirt and had to watch the whole over-the-head performance in reverse. It wasn’t that he preened, because he didn’t. It was just that some men could do a whole lot with putting on a T-shirt. He tugged it down over his broad chest and all those abs, ran a hand through his brown hair, smoothing it back and unfortunately displaying too much bicep for her entire comfort, and said, “Thanks.” And then, instead of flirting with her the way he’d done at the rocks, the way she’d expected, he said, “Russell told me you’d made him an owl that was the prettiest thing he’d ever seen. I’d sure like to see that owl.”
“Uh… OK.” Well, that had thrown her off balance. She went over to the window and carefully opened the drapes to reveal the octagonal piece. What else could she do? She always got flustered and embarrassed talking about her work, but she had to get over it. She might as well practice on Blake, because surely nobody else would be harder.
He didn’t say anything for a moment. He just sighed, and she forced herself not to wonder why. If it was, “Sorry I asked,” or “That’s nice.” She knew she was good, but she had a hard time showing her work to gallery owners, let alone multimillionaire tycoons who must be used to the best. Even if they were football players who were more likely to see art in a sports car than a sculpture.
Finally, when she couldn’t stand it anymore, he said, “I’ve got to admit, Russell was right. That is about the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Not fair,” she said after a minute, when she had her composure back.
“Excuse me?” he asked, and she didn’t have to look hard to see the mischief in his eyes.
“Forcing me to be gracious.”
She got a barely-there smile. “Somehow, I think you’ll recover. I’m preparing to be mortally wounded, but before you get there—how’d you get the idea for this? How’d you get that eagle? Do you go off pictures or what?”
“If I’m studying,” she said, “figuring out the feather pattern—yes. But the idea? No. That’s something I see.”
Blake looked at the snowy white and black of the owl’s wings, the head and breast glowing nearly pink as it soared across the twilight sky, its bands of blue shading to violet above the indistinct black outline of mountains. “You saw this?”
“Just for a moment. Just a flash.” She let herself look back and remember that evening hike by the lake, that breathtaking moment. “It was a good flash.”
“I’ll bet.”
“This was my first big bird piece,” she found herself going on, since he actually seemed interested. “I almost didn’t do it, not just because I knew it was a bad idea economically, but because it’d be such a hard test. I didn’t think I’d be up to it.”
“I’d say you were wrong,” he said quietly, and she felt a rush of… something. Of pride. Or pleasure that wasn’t sexual at all, but was too close to attraction. “Why was it a bad idea economically?”
She traced her index finger with the lightest touch over the tiny pieces of white and black that made up the owl
’s wings, with their suggestion of speckles. “Too many pieces. Too much art glass—the expensive kind, because I needed these textures, these swirls—but mostly, it took too long to do.”
“Why? Why was it too long?”
“You can’t charge enough to make it worthwhile.”
“Yes, you can.” The intensity on his face, in his golden eyes… it was mesmerizing. “You can. You can charge whatever you want.”
“Somebody actually has to pay it, though,” she said dryly. “It’s not fine art. It’s stained glass.”
“Now, sweetheart,” he told her like it was obvious, like he was completely sure, “that’s not believing. Damn straight this is fine art, and the more you charge, the more people will know it. You’ve got to make ’em believe, and that starts with you.”
She was having trouble getting her breath. “Easy to say. I need… I need the money. And don’t call me sweetheart.”
He was standing so close. Nine inches away, maybe. She could practically feel the heat coming from his body. He took her hand, still resting lightly on the glass, and turned it gently over. His thumb brushed the pads of her fingers, and she shivered. She should pull her hand away. She should.
“You’re cut here,” he said.
“Glass,” she said through a throat that had turned dry. “It happens.”
“Mm.” He let go of her hand, and she tried not to wish he hadn’t. She didn’t like him. He’d done Russell so much harm. He said, “How much would this cost if you could charge enough?”
“Um… I can’t charge enough for this, not for the hours it took. It was my first one. It’s not perfect.”
“You’re wrong. It’s perfect. How much?”
“Two… thousand?” Her voice rose on the word. “Maybe fifteen hundred.”
Silver-Tongued Devil (Portland Devils Book 1) Page 8